荒诞者共和

The movers and shakers behind what’s shown on your TV set and at your local Cineplex have shown themselves at times, to be hostile toward the Christian faith and it’s adherents.

Bryant Gumbel in a June, 2000 CBS “Early Show” interviewing Robert Knight of the Family Research Council appearing to defend the Boy Scouts refusal to allow homosexuals to be Scout leaders, thinking the mike was off, muttered that Knight was “a f***ing idiot.”

CNN founder Ted Turner asked employees who had ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday if they were “a bunch of Jesus freaks?”

In his book “Bias” Bernard Goldberg reported that CBS producer Roxanne Russell called Christian activist and then-presidential candidate Gary Bauer “the little nut from the Christian group.”

The Christian movie, Facing the Giants, was given a Parental Guidance rating, despite the fact that there’s nothing in there that parents need to “guide” their children around. “Those in charge of ratings said the movie’s heavy emphasis on Christianity might offend some of other religions.” This is the kind of mentality and hostility that’s churning out the TV shows and movies that litter America’s living rooms.

TV:

The Simpsons

Ned Flanders the goody-two-shoes fundamentalist who drives his neighbors crazy with his scripture quoting and positive outlook on life. Actually this is about the kindest representation on Christians from Hollywood.

Reverend Lovejoy…the boring minister who summed up his view of his ministry as “And then the 80’s came along and I just stopped caring.”

Grade: C

7th Heaven

A show about a Protestant minister and his family. Not too bad.

Grade: B+

Touched By An Angel

A mix of New Age religion and scripture. Mixing bible verses with other religions is never a good idea. See the Old Testament for God’s view point on that. An example from the angel Tess, played by Della Reese: “I am one with God, I am one with all men, I am one with all life.” Say what?

Grade: C

The Book of Daniel

According to the writers of this show, Jesus is very tolerant of sin. The family members were all messed up by promiscuity, dope smoking, pill popping, etc. In other words; your average Christian hypocrites.

Grade: F

There’s not enough room here to catalog every TV show, in the present or the past, that dealt with Christianity in their plots or sub-plots. The first three shows above are the least annoying to me, while the last one is more the norm for Hollywood. Let’s face it, when priests, ministers or fundamentalist Christians are depicted on TV, they are done so in an extremely negative fashion. They are depicted mostly as child molesters, thieves, womanizers, liars, greedy or just plain nuts.

Movies:

The Da Vinci Code

The book and the movie are based on fiction but that won’t stop Hollywood from pretending it’s all true and that the Bible is the one that’s fictional. The concept is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and they had a daughter. Here’s a comment from one review: “I’ll say it: It is anti-Jesus and anti-Catholic. Unintentionally though, it is a recruiting film for Opus Dei. Where do I sign up?”

Hannibal

The Christian character in this flick wants to kill another character and “feed him to the flesh-eating” pigs. Nice!

This from Charles Colson: “Sadly, there’s no shortage of other recent examples. In the historical film Quills, about the Marquis de Sade, the vilest sexual behavior is performed by a Catholic priest; de Sade is portrayed as the persecuted victim of a puritanical society.

Another film, The Pledge, portrays Christianity as a religion for killers. In a movie called The Cell, a Christian upbringing causes a character to become a serial killer.

Celluloid missionaries are almost as bad. In films like Black Robe and At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Christians bring, not salvation, but disease and death, slavery and hypocrisy.

As Christian screenwriter Brian Godawa notes in his book Hollywood Worldviews, in films like these, “Christianity does not merely lead to mental breakdown in [individuals]; it also leads to the breakdown of society.” Christians are portrayed as sick, twisted people who got that way through repressing their natural desires; their moral codes lead to intolerance, wife beating, and murder. He points to recent films like The Crucible and Chocolat as well.”

From Dr. Ted Baehr:

The ever continuing list from the smear merchants on the “Left Coast” includes “V for Vendetta” which includes race-hating and violence from the voice of Malcolm X and the man-hating, anti-Christian bashing of Gloria Steinem. “The rest of “V for Vendetta” not only depicts Christians as evil people who oppress and torture “innocent” people, it also depicts homosexuals as a persecuted, harmless minority of “nice” people.”

A comment from Todd Hertz, reviewer for Christianity Todayon the movie “Saved.” “The truth is, the movie is ultimately pro-faith and does make some perceptive criticisms of evangelicals. But not all is well. The problem is a lack of balance between hypocritical, judgmental Christians and loving, accepting Christians. In fact, the movie almost exclusively shows two kinds of people—hypocritical, judgmental Christians who cause problems, and loving, accepting non-Christians who make things right.”

Kingdom of Heaven Steven D. Greydanus (Decent Films) writes, “The story could largely be described as the failure of moderate Christians to restrain fanatical Christians from oppressing innocent Muslims, thereby provoking justifiable Muslim retaliation against the Christians, both fanatics and otherwise. Yet Saladin himself is not an uncomplicated noble figure. As he prepares to lay siege to Jerusalem, he explicitly rejects the possibility of showing mercy, relenting only when Balian fights him to a standstill. The film cross-examines the Christians in a way it doesn’t the Muslims.”

He concludes that it “leans toward the agnostic conclusion that the world might be better off if there were no temple wall, no mosque, no sepulchre for Christians, Jews, and Muslims to fight over. Alas, the sad history of religious strife in, over and around the Holy Land makes it difficult to fault the filmmakers for finding this a tempting point of view.”

‘The Beast’ “The plot involves a fundamentalist Christian pastor who disappears after he ‘stumbles across incontrovertible factual evidence that Christ never existed’. In searching for him, the films shows his daughter Danielle ‘struggling with her own need to believe that Christ existed’ and also combating ‘a band of fundamentalist Christians who will stop at nothing to suppress the truth’. In the film, they are portrayed as ‘trying to cover up Christianity’s best-kept secret’.

The film, it is said by its makers, is founded on ‘factual material normally hidden from public view by the efforts of Bible - believing Christians’. It adds "conveniently ignoring the historical testimony of Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonus, Phlegon and many other historians and writers ‑ that -‘there is no non-Christian confirmation that Jesus Christ ever existed’.”

The list could on and on until a book was filled with the examples of hatred, mockery and ridicule by those who make TV shows and movies out of Hollywood. Well why wouldn’t they hate Christians and all they stand for? What the Bible teaches is exactly the opposite of the type of lifestyle lived by many of these folks, that God commands His children to live.

Watch their products if you want. Pay them out of your hard earned money. I won’t pay them another dime to see one of their movies or buy a product from one of the sponsors of their TV shows. If enough of us do this, maybe they’ll wake up. After all, money is their god.


7 responses so far ↓

rezalien // Feb 10th 2007 at 9:42 pm

Very strong words, and strong opinions. I would not want to be the one who argues against your contention that negative stereotypes persist in television and film. However, as a fellow Christian, I watch the same movies and television shows and think that these stereotypes persist when people like us behave in a contentious way. The more we claim that we are persecuted, the more nonbelievers hear our words and think that we are being arrogant do-gooders with martyr complexes. I believe that we need to change our approach.

Let’s begin achknowledging where these accusations are right. The church has committed terrible acts, and although you or I have perhaps not contributed to those acts, we are together with those have in faith and we all make up the representative of Christ here on earth. We are ambassadors of Christ; meaning, what the world sees from us as a whole, they are assuming is what Christ must be like. So, I believe we should be more concerned with getting the church to be a united force for good in the world rather than a force committed to repudiating the sometimes-deserved attacks against us. Let’s be proactive, not reactive.

A case study: I am quite familiar with other Christians’ complaints about the portrayal of Christianity on The Simpsons. However, I love the show, and it is because of two reasons. First, the critiques they give of Christians remind me of how Christians have behaved improperly in the past, and therefore give me clues of how to be a better ambassador for Christ. Second, the portrayal of Christians on the Simpsons, largely embodied by Ned Flanders, is ultimately redeeming. In an episode where Flanders’ reputation is smeared in Springfield because he finally gets makes a false step, the town begins to bear down on him. Homer, Ned’s constant enemy, comes to Ned’s defense and tells the community that the world would be a better place if everybody acted like Flanders. Wow. I don’t know about you, but I hear that and think that the Simpsons is telling us that, despite our human flaws which we often won’t admit to as Christians, the world is more than willing to give us a chance, if we remain humble. I belive Christ also reminded us to be humble.

Thanks for the post. Keep up the good work. Any questions, agreements or disagreements, I would love to know.

cumby // Feb 10th 2007 at 11:58 pm

rezalien : Thanks for stopping by and for your thoughtful comment.

“The church has committed terrible acts”

A tiny minority have. Unfortunately it’s the most visible ones. Wouldn’t it be unfair if Hollywood portrayed all blacks as pimps, wife beaters, drug dealers and criminals…oh wait, they’ve been doing that for years.

“So, I believe we should be more concerned with getting the church to be a united force for good in the world rather than a force committed to repudiating the sometimes-deserved attacks against us. Let’s be proactive, not reactive.”

How about if we do both? Be proactive and contend for the faith? See what these people are saying reflects on my Father. And that gets my blood to boiling. He picked me up from the pig pen, cleaned me up and gave me a good life. Now these people are constantly ridiculing Him. I wasn’t named “Peter” by accident. HaHa!

I agree with you on the Simpsons. It’s one of the only shows I can stomach. And if you’ll notice I confirmed that in my description of the Ned character. Btw is it just me or is that character becoming more effeminate every season? They have sure hinted that his sons may be.

The longer I walk with our Lord, the more intolerant I’m becoming of the sick, twisted things that go on in the world. But it is also causing me to look at those same things in myself. Crucifying the flesh on a daily basis is tough and the swill that comes out of the TV 24/7 doesn’t help. That’s why the TV’s only on about two hours a week.

rezalien // Feb 11th 2007 at 12:32 am

Again, I appreciate your thoughtful words.

I can certainly understand your frustration. We live in a society, I think, that no longer accepts as a baseline Christian assumptions. In many ways this is discouraging. In others, though, I think that it affords exciting possibilities for finding new ways of engaging the other and finding in the process a fresh understanding of what the “Good News” of the Gospel really is.

Concerning TV, I unreservedly applaud your efforts in limiting your television consumption. The less, the better. I sincerely believe that we need to be engaged honestly with the culture around us; at the same time, we need to be cautious that we remain true to our beliefs. Besides portrayal of Christians on TV shows, TV can shape our perspective on the world in so many ways. One of my chief concerns with television is the extent to which advertisements seep into our consciousness and inform us about how we are to understand our self-worth. It is difficult, I think, to raise a new generation of Christians in a television-saturated world without them coming to the belief that if their clothes aren’t trendy, or their teeth aren’t white enough, or if they don’t use the right body spray, they are without significance. How do we train their minds in such a way that they know they can turn to the Christian faith and find significance, rather than go shopping? I believe it is in reminding of them that they are not part of the story commercials tell, but rather that they are a part of the Christian story, the Christian narrative.

timbob // Feb 11th 2007 at 1:33 am

Television presents a real perdicament in this family. I have unsaverd family members who watch some of the most ridiculous things that one can imagine. My thoughts are that if I come down really hard on this stuff, I’ll do more scattering than gathering. Yet if I say nothing, the garbage continues coming into the home. In the world of spiritual warfare, this household is one hotly contested battlefield. I strive to stay in prayer, and say what needs to be said when it needs to be said while shutting up when words would only cause damage. I look at the situation as “souls in need of Jesus” and want everything that I say and do be toward that goal. As for television, I enjoy the history channel more than anything. My work schedule allows for little spare time and much of that spare time is spent here. Thanks for staying on top of so many issues.

cumby // Feb 11th 2007 at 2:05 am

I prefer to lead by example along with the occasional rolling of the eyes.

But there are some things I put my foot down over. Going into my son’s room one morning, when he was supposed to be asleep, and finding him gazing at a “Girls Gone Wild” commercial was one such incident.

Had he been watching “Boys Gone Wild” [if there is such a thing] it would have sent me to the psychiatrist’s couch.

Marti Abernathey // Feb 11th 2007 at 9:20 am

LOL. Christians, persecuted? Um… first of all, your lobby had the White House for the past 8 years. I’d hardly call that persecuted. And one of the quotes from above said

“The rest of “V for Vendetta” not only depicts Christians as evil people who oppress and torture “innocent” people, it also depicts homosexuals as a persecuted, harmless minority of ‘nice people.’”

Um, ever read Foxes Book of Martyrs? Centuries of “Christian Persecution” there. History is FULL of “Christians” that persecuted other minorities. The war that is going on isn’t the left against the right, or liberalism against conservatism, but science vs faith.

Lastly, I grew up around different denominations and was exposed to so many different sects of Christianity. I know scripture like the back of my hand. One of the subtle things that most American Christians don’t understand is the concept that there is a difference between what should be illegal and what a sin is.

To say that homosexuals are not nice people, is to not not know them. I’m not gay myself, but I am trans. I am exposed to a lot of gays and lesbians. As a whole, they are some of the most accepting, loving, and genuine people you will ever meet.

In closing, popular culture will continue to become more and more secular because of Christian thought spewed above. If one looks at the Christian world view from a perspective of logic and truth, one finds many of its beliefs to be based in bigotry and prejudice. The youth of the US is seeing this lack of logic of which they are schooled in the value of. When they are friends with, and love “nice” homosexuals, they see how twisted and untrue your words are.

I agree with Ghandi, “Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Marti

cumby // Feb 11th 2007 at 11:34 am

Isn’t freedom of speech great, folks?